Part 1 Remember Anastasia? To refresh your memory, she is a high school science teacher who has the dream of traveling the world. Anastasia decides that if she teaches a science course online, she will be able to work from anywhere in the world if she has an internet connection.

To construct her course, Anastasia needs to put together a rough course calendar. Her course is going to be on biology, or the study of living organisms. The course has eight sections, with each section covering three to six subtopics. Each subtopic takes a week to cover.

Here are the sections in the course. To help Anastasia out, do some research online and find at least three subtopics for each section. (You could look at websites such as k12.com or textbook publishers such as Houghton Mifflin Harcourt or Prentice Hall to see what topics are typically covered in these types of courses).

Biology Foundations
Cells
Energy and Transport
Reproduction and Cell Division
Classical Genetics
Molecular Genetics
Human Body Systems
Ecology
That is a lot to fit in! Anastasia needs her course to consist of 36 weeks’ worth of lessons. Create a 36-week chart to help Anastasia fill in her lessons so that she knows when each topic will be covered. Fill in the subtopics that you found and spread them out evenly so that all topics are covered in Anastasia’s 36-week period. Anastasia will use your chart as a course calendar. Don’t forget that one subtopic takes a week to cover. Some sections may take more weeks to cover than others, depending on the number of subtopics included, and that is just fine!

Part 2
Now that Anastasia can see her course laid out, she wants to find a platform to use in order to teach her subjects. Anastasia reaches out to Barry, a web designer who has created online learning platforms in the past. Anastasia explains to Barry that she wants to be able to include interactive features in each lesson as well as a weekly online experiment for the students.

Barry gives Anastasia two options:
Option 1:
He can build a website that includes Anastasia’s content. It would have modules that students can explore and videos embedded through the text. There would also be a drop box for students to upload their work directly to Anastasia, as well as a web conferencing system so that Anastasia could teach her students during class time.

Barry says that his initial setup fee for this website is $500, plus $20 per hour of Barry’s time. Barry thinks the website would probably take him about 100 hours to create. Once the site is set up, Anastasia could pay Barry a yearly fee of $100 to host her site.

Option 2:
Anastasia could use an existing platform, such as Teachable, which already has everything laid out. Barry could just add Anastasia’s content to the existing platform. The platform is all inclusive, so Anastasia could manage her course and her students from an easy website. Barry says that he could create Anastasia’s course on the online platform for a flat fee of $1000. The platform costs $30 monthly.

Help Anastasia choose the right option. Calculate Anastasia’s costs for her first two years of teaching her course using both options. Then make a list of pros and cons so that Anastasia can weigh the differences. Traveling is expensive, so Anastasia wants to get the most for her money. Still, she wants her online course to run smoothly because she may not always have time to troubleshoot. Would it be better to have Barry on hand to fix errors? Or should she use an established platform that is made for her to tweak things herself? Help her decide!

Part 3
Finally, help Anastasia by thinking of three professionals that can help her in the next steps of her course development. Do some quick research about each of the clusters we discussed in this unit and select one career from each that will help Anastasia create her online course. For each position, write two to three sentences about what the career is and how it can help Anastasia.

Create a summary of the components from Parts 1, 2, and 3 for Anastasia in a word processing document. Your summary must include the following elements:

Part 1: Anastasia’s Biology Course Calendar, with the subtopics scheduled correctly within 36 weeks
Part 2: Barry’s Web Design Options, with two-year expense calculations
Part 3: Three professionals that can help Anastasia moving forward (one from each cluster)